Candidates to watch while window is open

The Philadelphia Eagles might still be celebrating — deservedly so — their win in Super Bowl LIX, but the first major step of the 2025 player-acquisition period begins Tuesday, with the opening of the franchise-tag window at 4 p.m. ET. Until March 4, teams can use the tag to block one of their own impending free agents from hitting the open market, making it an extremely powerful tool for management to shape free agency.

Once the tag is applied, the team and player have more time to negotiate a long-term deal — that’s the best-case scenario. In the less ideal outcome, no long-term agreement is reached — in some cases, nobody even wants to reach one — and the player plays the season under a lucrative one-year pact. Pay is either set by the franchise-tag formula — depending on the type of tag, it can be based on the top average salaries at the player’s position or 120 percent of his previous salary — or potentially negotiated by the player and team. Pay also increases each subsequent time the player is tagged by his team, which can happen a maximum of three times. Players generally hate the tag, because it offers no long-term security.

Reminder: Each team can use one franchise tag per offseason. The franchise tag can be exclusive (the player is not free to sign with another team) or non-exclusive (another team can sign the player, but it must surrender two first-round draft selections to the team losing the player), and the deadline for tagged players to sign a long-term deal this year is July 15. Last year, eight players received the franchise tag, and seven eventually secured a long-term contract, meaning the tag was finally used in the spirit in which it was originally intended.

Here’s a look at potential candidates for this go around: